"Already looking toward the year 2000 A.D., the president of the
National Education Association, Catherine Barrett, wrote in the Feb. 10,
1973, issue of the Saturday Review of Education, that 'dramatic changes
in the way we will raise children in the year 2000 are indicated,
particularly in terms of schooling.... We will need to recognize that
the so-called "basic skills" which currently represent nearly
the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one- quarter
of the present school-day.... When this happens--and it is nearly
here--the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of
information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher....
We will be the agents of change'."

Dennis Lawrence Cuddy, Ph.D.

Table of Contents

Just What Is Going On?

What OBE Reveals About Itself

How OBE Was Conceived And Given Birth

OBE And The Catholic Educational Scene

Alternative Source Of Values

Toward A Socialist Transformation Of The West

Just What Is Wrong With OBE?

Poisoning The Future

Dennis Laurence Cuddy, Ph.D., Now Is The Dawning Of
The New Age New World Order, Hearthstone Publishing LTD., Oklahoma
City, OK, p. 176.

Text

Some years ago, a school bus and its cargo of children
was captured, hidden away, and the passengers held for ransom. The shock
of this perversion of purpose, the take-over of children put to the
purposes of a kidnapper, taken advantage of in their presence together
for transport to and from school, was felt world wide. It was recognized
that the trust of both parents and the children had been violated by
someone bent on achieving a purpose of his ownextorting
from those who cared for and loved those children what he wanted.

More and more personsparents
especiallyare asking if
something similar is not being done under the guise of what is called
"outcome-based education." If the critics of this development
in schooling are correct, certain philosophers and ideologically
motivated educators have taken over classrooms and are holding students
hostage to the ideas and theories of what should be learned and
accepted. If this is so, then education is being turned from its purpose
of formation through offering truth and wisdom in keeping with the
dignity of the human person to indoctrination by means of both inclusion
and omission to advance subjective purposes and ideologies.

The very possibility alone demands the matter be
examined closely, which this monograph will attempt to do. The future of
human society and culture obviously depends on what can be established
in this regard.

Just What Is Going On?

Proponents of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) insist there
is nothing sinister happening. OBE is simply an effort to improve and
sharpen education of our young people, especially in view of the
impending Third Millennium. In this outlook, OBE is a means of making
sure today's students can implement and apply what they have learned,
putting it into practice in an increasingly complex and challenging
environment. The emphasis, therefore, is practicalthe
living of learningrather
than simply accumulating information. It perhaps could be summarized
with a motto, "Doing More Than Knowing."

But there is a wealth of evidence that there is more to
it than that. And the totality of evidence suggests that the real
"outcome" being sought is to determine what students as
tomorrow's citizens will do and toward what purpose by controlling what
they learn and what they fail to learn now. Thus, the recent deemphasis
of history in Littleton, Colorado, public high schools after two OBE
enthusiasts were elected to the school board, despite the fact they
insisted, when running for office, that they supported a stress on
basics. History is not very basic for OBE people because it unmasks
foolishness and points out wisdom. It verifies unchanging truths and
principles in the experience of our ancestors. Those determined to
discredit such things dare not let those they are teaching look
backward.

In September, 1995, Robert Holland, op-ed page editor of
the Richmond Times-Dispatch, wrote:

". . . Hundreds of people from all parts of the
country have called me the past two years to ask my advice on how to
halt the monolithic OBE (Outcome-Based Education) movement and
effort of the education/industrial complex to transform schooling
radically according to engineered 'outcomes'many
of them based on Skinnerian behavior modification."[1] (The late
B.J. Skinner, advocate of the possibility and desirability of
controlling all human behavior through psychological manipulation.FM)

Holland lists some of the things his callers reported:
Asking children strange and personal questions; failure to correct
students' misspellings; ending honors course in Western Civilization;
requiring children to perform community service; promoting the notion
the school is the children's family; junking grades, texts, class
rankings.

Another writer, Candace de Russy, gives some questions
asked of students that are indeed strange and personal, and under
federal sponsorship, no less. Among the questions:

"(Does) the
prospect of working most of my adult life depress me?"

"Are
you routinely left at home without adults being there?"

"Have
you ever thought about killing yourself?"

"Have you ever
worried about your birth father's drinking too much or using
drugs?"

"Have you ever been touched sexually by anyone (adult
or young person) in a way that you felt was inappropriate?"

"Are you expected to do chores and help out at home?"[2]

In a test on a story titled, "Your Dad Is a
Wimp?" the highest grade given fourth-graders went to a pupil who
wrote it would be "fun" to be part of a family like that of
the character Jesse, whose mother worked and whose father stayed home
cooking. The lowest score went to a pupil who wrote he wouldn't like to
live with a family like Jesse's, being happy in a family that can be
presumed to be the traditional one with Dad working and Mom at home.

Another way to earn a low score in such testing is to
hold firm to views in place before certain recommended reading and
dialogue occurred, or (in a discussion supposedly concerning the
mathematics of corn production) for even mentioning herbicides or
pesticides as means of increasing crop yield.[3]

The Phyllis Schlafly Report[4] tells of an
attempt (in 1995) to introduce a "Multicultural Nonsexist Education
Plan" into the Des Moines (IA) public school district. This called
for developing gay/lesbian information modules that could be "fully
integrated" by what the plan itself called infusion into every
level of school: "To use the instructional materials selection
cycle to infuse information regarding gay/lesbian/bisexual issues into
the curriculum." Some of the discussion to be generated by this
infusion was to concern "same-gender families and parenting:
evolution of the modern gay/lesbian/bisexual identity . . .; information
on gender/sexual orientation and the natural diversity present in human
beings." The plan called for encouraging staff and student
attendance at the annual "Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth
Conference," for providing information on national marches for
"Lesbians and Gay Rights," for "advertising the Gay and
Lesbian Resource Center in school newspapers," and for providing
"support for gay/lesbian/bisexual staff members."

The plan apparently was placed on hold after
considerable resistance. The Phyllis Schlafly Report commented:

"The curriculum is determined to use the public
schools as a change agent to create 'student awareness of homophobic
thinking and behavior and to compare these with other forms of prejudice
and oppression'."

If this plan is not specifically part of Outcome-Based
Education it certainly employs the OBE methodology and tactic, and would
fit in without difficulty once OBE philosophy dominates the general
educational purpose.

The anecdotal and inferential evidence about what OBE is
about could fill a several-volume library. But the whole picture should
be filled on by evidence from OBE sources, statements, and revelations.

What OBE Reveals About Itself

The descriptive name for this movement and the education
it promotes was given by Dr. William Spady, sociologist and director of
the International Center on Outcome-Based Education. Dr. Spady said that
in his OBE, "factual recall fade(s) into the background."[5]
This fading out of fact from students' minds is a first and required
step for OBE's purpose --in the words of Prof. Benjamin Bloom, "to
change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students." Dr. Spady
confirms that OBE is based on Prof. Bloom's theories, among which is
that the "affective domain" (feelings, beliefs, attitudes) is
of supreme importance. Thus "good teaching" is described by
the Professor as "the teacher's ability to challenge students'
fixed beliefs."[6]

Luksik and Hoffecker give evidence of just what that
means:

"'Changing Values' is the title of a student
worksheet from Iowa. Its introduction tells pupils, 'The values of past
generations do not always meet our present needs.'The worksheet explains
that although some old values are still held, others have been replaced
with 'new values.' Students are told either to write 'no change' or to
explain what caused the 'new value' change. Look at just three of these
'old' American beliefs:"

2. People ought to have large families.
"4. Everyone has a right to have as many children as he or she
wants.
"6. Americans have a right to the resources of the world."[7]

Governmental interest in change-oriented education was
identified by B.J. Skinner himself, in his work Technology of
Teaching, 1968:

"Absolute power in education is not a serious issue
today because it seems out of reach. However, a technology of teaching
will need to be much more powerful if the race with catastrophe is to be
won, and it may then, like any powerful technology, need to be
contained. An appropriate counter control will not be generated as a
revolt against aversive measures but by a policy designed to maximize
the contribution which education will make to the strength of the
culture. The issue is important because the government of the future
will probably operate mainly through educational techniques."[8]

What Skinner was saying is that future government will
make an ally of education and its technology to reinforce its rule and
the culture favorable to it. (The Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci
advanced approximately the same thesis in the 1920s regarding the
ascendancy of the Marxism he was acting for. Both Skinner and Gramsci
are being proven correct in large areas of Outcome-Based Education.)

The federal government's interest and participation in
OBE dates back well over a decade. U.S. Department of Education funds
support the "Mastery in Learning Project" being carried on at
nine regional laboratories.[9] "Mastery Learning" was an
earlier name before Dr. Spady renamed what is now more commonly called
Outcome-Based Education. No matter what it is called, this kind of
"education" is more Skinnerian, Pavlovian training, with
behavior, control, and compliance the goal as revealed by
"outcome"which is to say
not only acceptance of a desired viewpoint (or as now called a
"politically correct" position) but also the effective use of
that position in community, converting that viewpoint into active
involvement.

As Texas Congressman Dick Armey explained it to his
colleagues, "OBE shifts a school's focus from how much students
know (cognitive outcomes) to how well they're socialized (affective
outcomes).... It weans children from their parents' values to instill in
them politically correct, secular-left values."[10] Armey wrote
fellow Congressmen that "Goals 2000 does all of this, via a new
national school board called NESIC."

"Goals 2000" is part of the title of the
Clinton Administration's "Educate America Act" passed by both
bodies of the U.S. Congress in early 1994. It mandates an unprecedented
intrusion into local control of education, and states as a primary goal
that "all students will be involved in activities that demonstrate
community service."[11] NESIC is the National Education Standards
Council set up by the Clinton act. This council will certify what all
students should know and be able to do--which is precisely OBE at its
essence.

How OBE Was Conceived And Given Birth

Long before it was known as OBE, the seeds for it were
sown abroad by those such as the Fabian ideologue, H.G. Wells. He wrote
these prophetic statements in his 1934 autobiography:

"The organization of this that I call the Open
Conspiracy, the evocation of a greater sounder fellow to the Communist
essay, an adequately implemented Liberal Socialism, which will
ultimately supply teaching, coercive and directive public services to
the whole world, is the immediate task....

". . . Its coming is likely to happen very
quickly.... Sometimes I feel that generations of propaganda and
education may have to precede it. . . Plans for political synthesis seem
to grow bolder and more extensive."[12]

After reading Wells' autobiography, Franklin D.
Roosevelt on Feb. 1935, wrote the British socialist-futurist:

"How do you manage to retain such extraordinarily
clear judgments?. . .. I believe our (the New Deal) biggest success is
making people think during these past two years. They may not think
straight but they are thinking in the right direction . . . and your
direction and mine are not so far apart; at least we both seek peaceable
conveyances in our travels."[13]

On Nov. 20, 1936, Wells spoke to the Royal Institution
of Great Britain on "World Encyclopaedia," suggesting a new
social organization, "a new institution" of that name:

"(World Encyclopaedia) would play the role of an
undogmatic Bible to a world culture.... It would hold the world together
mentally.... Ultimately, if our dream is realized, it must exert a very
great influence upon everyone who controls administrations, makes wars,
directs mass behavior, feeds, moves, starves and kills populations....
You see how such an Encyclopaedic organization could spread like a
nervous network, a system of mental control around the globe."[14]

Earlier Wells had written that such an organization of
"intelligent and quite possibly in some cases wealthy men"
would at the most "utilize existing apparatus of political
control" to attain its ends.

FDR had written Wells in December of 1933, thanking him
for "doing much to educate people everywhere," saying he (FDR)
had read "almost everything that you have written."[15] In
1941, in his annual message to Congress, FDR defined a world which would
guarantee to everyone "Four Freedoms," namely, Freedom of
Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want, Freedom From Fear. It is
not surprising to learn:

"From 1931, Harold Ickes belonged to an elite corps
calling itself the Government (later, National) Planning Association,
which drafted the tentative blueprint for the New Deal in consultation
with the Fabian-sponsored group in London known as PEP (Political and
Economic Planning)."[16]

The Clinton Administration, which is fronting for OBE
with both legislation and tax monies, is the heir to the New Deal.
Whether it is being used by the Renaissance (a group of intelligent and,
in most cases, wealthy, persons confirming Wells' prediction)
organization to which Clinton himself belongs is not of immediate
practical importance. OBE is the genius of Goals 2000, and far from
being voluntary as some of its defenders claim, the purpose of Goals
2000 is to use funding to coerce all state educational systems to
comply. That, too, Wells had foreseen as Liberal Socialism's peaceable
but coercive method. Dr. Cuddy comments on the supposed voluntary
character of Goals 2000:

"Because the . . . goals are codified under this
law, it is a major power move by the federal government toward
nationalizing American education, despite proponents' assurance that the
law says participation is voluntary. When Congress provides about $1
billion for Goals 2000 over the next 3 years, it will be an offer that
most states and local education agencies cannot refuse."[17]

Clinton's own education secretary, Richard Reilly,
points to economics as the force that will enroll most states in this
program.[18]

OBE and the Catholic Educational Scene

It would be thought that for many reasons, some
discussed in the final segment of this monograph, that Catholics would
be immune to the methods, promises, and purposes of OBE. Unfortunately,
that is not the case. Not only do the economic pressures discussed above
apply to private as well as public schools, the desire of many Catholic
educators to be "accredited" and to match public schools in
professionalism (which ironically would mean steps backwards in genuine
excellence) lure many Catholic schools to bow to the pressure toward OBE
conformity. Further, the uncritical and often superficial thought
revealed in imprudent reforms imagined to implement "the spirit of
Vatican II," has led many of the new generation of Catholic
educators to accept the claims and methods of behaviorist psychology. A
classic case of Outcome-Based Education was practiced on the leadership
of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) community of nuns in Los Angeles.
One of the practitioners in that case, Dr. William Coulson, has drawn
back in shock from the results, which had the former nuns abandoning
their former goals and even their religious vocations.[19]

Sr. M. Ann Eckhoff, S.S.N.D., superintendent of
education for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, writing in Education St.
Louis in December, 1993, explained "a number of school
districts along with the Archdiocese are attempting to collaborate in
the formation of a demonstration site for 'testing out' new ways of
learning." Those new ways will include: "Emphasis on the
process rather than the right answer."[20]

A book review in the Pilot, official newspaper of
the Boston Archdiocese, reveals and sounds a needed alarm about this
seduction of Catholic education by OBE subjectivism. This highly
significant review must be quoted at length:

"The issue of 'Catholic identity' of our schools
is, in the view of many bishops, pastors, educators and parents, central
to the survival and effectiveness of our schools. The way the central
issue is treated in this book is disappointing. It relies on an
extremely caricatured comparison of a 'pre-Vatican II' and 'post-Vatican
II' Church. This section is not the work of the major authors but of a
Helen Marks, a former Dominican sister. One suspects that the rhetoric .
. . reflects more of her own odyssey than a theologically sophisticated
or accurate analysis of the reality of the meaning and impact of Vatican
II at which she dramatically asserts 'the Catholic Church recovered its
soul.' (p. 51)

"If the 'inspirational ideology' which the book
asserts is the new guiding vision for Catholic schools, then those
concerned about the schools' Catholic identity had better take notice.
In several places the book states that the new purpose is 'to pursue
peace and social justice within an ecumenical and multicultural world.'
Laudable as such an effort is, one suspects that it is not the specific
purpose of the school but the wider goal of the whole Christian
community. The school must impart to its students the intellectual and,
yes, theological building blocks to make it possible for students to
make significant contributions to such an effort.

"This will demand a quality religious education
program rooted in the Church's deepest understanding of the mysteries of
faithespecially the
Incarnation and salvific redemption by Jesus Christwhich
are the deepest and surest foundations of Catholic effort at societal
transformation.

"None of this is suggested by this book. Rather it
exudes what Avery Dulles calls 'the hermeneutics of discontinuity'promoting
the myth of some kind of radical new Catholicism that was given birth to
at the Council. The book assures us that a Catholic school with this
'new vision' will have abandoned its attitudes of being 'uncompromising
on its claims on truth' or seeing 'Catholic doctrine as received truth,
the unchanging "deposit of faith" that must be handed down
through successive generations'....

"According to the book all of this outdated concern
with the Church's faith and truth has been replaced by a new style of
religious education: 'Religion teachers now encourage personal
interpretation and discussion in which students share their religious
views...student-led prayers and creative liturgies center on friendship,
belonging and reaching out to others'.

"If, as the book asserts, all this represents 'the
evolutionary transformation within Catholic schools over three decades'
(p. 10), then, I suspect we are in a problem situation and that our
schools are fostering instead of combatting the slide into 'cultural
Catholicism,' which has been observed by recent commentators."[21]

Alternative Source Of Values

Abraham Maslow, one of the behaviorist psychologists
whose theories served to smash to pieces the California Immaculate Heart
of Mary sisterhood, was quoted in Pace magazine (December, 1969):

"Now religions have cracked up . . . (Children)
have no source of values to go by. So they have to work everything out
for themselves. This new humanistic revolution has an alternative source
of values."

That source obviously is humanism. Maslow was 1967
Humanist of the Year. It seems inescapable that the psychologists whose
theories move OBE were actively involved with what Maslow calls the
crack-up of religions, so that Humanism would be able to put those
pieces of "cracked up" religion together in the image of their
own minds. Even those not given to credit conspiracies of such magnitude
must see something preternatural about such fostered outcomes.

It might have been humanism which Fr. John A. Hardon S.J.,
had in mind when he wrote:

"Is there one basic error among those who are
exalting human freedom? Yes, it is the error of divorcing human freedom
from dependence on God. This is practical atheism, as identified by the
Second Vatican Council. Each person's conscience is given the status of
a supreme tribunal of moral judgment. Here the subjective conscience
becomes ruler in moral matters apart from the mind and will Of
God."[22]

In 1907 Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson gave a chillingly
prophetic vision of that sort of atheism (though perhaps not merely
practical) that we are increasingly facing as today's reality: ". .
. In 1917 . . . Communism really began . . . The new order began then .
. . (After 1989) the final scheme of Western Free Trade . . .
Esotericism is making enormous strides . . . and that means Pantheism .
. . Patriotism has been dying fast . . . (There is) this European
parliament . . . (They believe) cooperation is the one hope of the world
. . . (There will be) the alliance of Psychology and Materialism . . .
With the release Act in 1998 . . . (there were) the ministers of
euthanasia . . . (The Lord of the World) had a magnetic character . . .
rising out of the heaving dun-coloured waters of American Socialism like
a vision . . . The press was engineered with extraordinary adroitness .
. . The world is one now, not many. Individualism is dead . . . For any
one to say that they believe in God--it is high treason . . . The
Humanity Religion was the only one. Man was God...."[23]

Just a few more developments and the above will not have
any fiction left in itit
will be fact foreseen by this British convert-priest long before it had
happened. And either OBE or something very much like it will have had an
important part in making the prophecy come true.

Toward A Socialist Transformation Of The West

Antonio Gramsci, Italian revolutionist of the early 20th
Century, was a prophet of methodology for change, the methodology of
ideological and cultural infiltration using all means, and especially
education, as the carrier. Gramsci considered "two
revolutions,"[24] the one waged by Communism in Europe and
comprised of uprisings, seizure of power, subversion aimed at destroying
existing structures, and transferred to the United States particularly
after the collapse of prosperity. This revolution was unwinnable, in
Gramsci's thesis, because it had not first won over the mind of the
existing order and structure. Only by so doing, he argued, could that
order and structure be replaced by the Marxist socialist apparatus.

Gramsci framed the second, and winnable, revolution in
terms of "ideological hegemony"breaking
down that hegemony enjoyed by bourgeois-capitalist domination of culture
and then "reification" (bringing into concrete reality) of the
Marxist view to replace it. The struggle therefore was for nothing less
than the total mind and soul of existing culture that the revolutionists
wished to overthrow and replace:

"Gramsci's definition of ideological hegemony was .
. . broad. It encompassed the whole range of values, attitudes,
beliefs, cultural norms, legal precepts, etc., that to one degree or
another permeated civil society, that solidified the class structure and
the multiple forms of domination that pass through it. The arenas of
ideological- cultural transmissions are infinite: the state,
legal system, workplace, schools, churches, bureaucracies, cultural
activities, the media, the family. Hegemony quite clearly embraces far
more than single, well-defined ideologies (e.g., liberalism) that can be
said to reflect (and mystify) the interests of dominant classes. In
capitalist societies it might include not only the competitive
individualism diffused by liberalism but also the social atomization and
depoliticization produced by bureaucracy, the fatalism instilled by
religion, the state-worship fanned by nationalism, and the sexism
which grows out of the family."[25] (emphasis added).

The author of the above words might have been thinking
about many aspects of OBE when he wrote the following summary of
Gramsci's plan for socialist victory:

"Though its influence would not be felt until years
later, Gramscian Marxism contributed immensely to the development of a
critical- dialectical theory insofar as it refocused attention on the
ideological conditions necessary for a democratic socialist
transformation of the West. The concept of hegemony was vital for such a
renewal because it encouraged the thematic reintegration of ideology,
culture, and consciousness into a Marxian framework without joining the
common flight from politics. In doing so, it restored emphasis upon
political education as a 'moral intellectual' force that would subvert
the legitimating principles of bourgeois society and further lay
the foundations of a secular and emancipatory 'integrated culture.' It
would be a revolutionary pedagogy firmly grounded in the praxis of
everyday political struggles. For Gramsci, this meant a vast theoretical
reconstruction of Marxism along a whole range of decidedly 'subjective'
problems: the formation of mass consciousness, rule of the
intellectuals, nature of the party, and genesis of political
strategy."[26]

The modus operandi of OBE could have the
following words of Gramsci as a motto:

"Ideas and opinions are not simultaneously 'born'
in each individual brain: they have had a center of formation, of
irradiation, or dissemination, of persuasiona
group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and
presented them in the current form of political reality."[27]

In Latin America, Gramsci's "reification"
becomes "conscientization" as an instrument of what admirers
of Paulo Freire, Gramsci disciple, call "transformational
education." This kind of education results (and is intended to
result) in such things as:

"Seeing things from a new perspective;

"The way the non-poor see the world must change;

"A new way of perceiving;

"New feelings;

"New perspectives arise;

"It's a different kind of consciousness I bring to the
issues;

"A complete reshaping of the participants' view of themselves
and of their world;

"A radical new reorientation is to result in a reordering of
values and new ways of acting out those values in individual
behavior and in political and social action for change;

William Bean Kennedy's analysis of where and how
"transformational education" originates and functions is
highly instructive of just what is facing today's world at the hands of
some determined ideologues:

"In his classic essay in the Depression years of the 1930's,
George Counts asks this question: 'Dare the schools change the social
order?' . . . A more modest question: 'Can transformation education make
a contribution toward changing the social order?' Obviously the large
macrostructural context for these efforts at education for
transformation threatens to overwhelm the participants because of the
ideological conditioning to which they are subjected and the powerful
obstacles to change that they face. Why then do they make the effort?

"Probably the persons who created these models were themselves
beneficiaries of some kind of creative and prophetic learning about
society and of a vision for the society that came from historical and
religious traditions. In different ways they became committed to
expenditure of time and energy, to some form of exposure to different
environments, to risky experiments."[29]-[30]

Kennedy was commenting on models for bringing about change developed
and/or discussed at various consultations and meetings of the
Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education and the
Religious Education Association. Obviously, from the reports in the work
produced by Kennedy and others, these educators for the most part are
admirers of Freire and hard at work through education to bring about his
Marxist goals. That they have chosen the very methods and often the
terminology that is general throughout Outcome-Based Education should
put all concerned on notice: OBE involves converting all exposed to it
to the subjective and often subversive ideas of those few who consider
themselves called to pull down structures, overturn values, implant
their own ideas, and thereby "reinvent power" and in doing so
take control of culture, society, and the state.

Just What Is Wrong With OBE?

Doesn't all education attempt to inculcate values, to
bring about outcomes in terms of acceptance of what is taught and the
ability to apply it in situations of life? Of course. But there are
distinct differences in that exercise between OBE and traditional
education.

Traditional education appeals to the intellect first and
primarily on the basis of the reasonableness of what is taught, the
success it has shown in the past, the universal acceptance of the
significance of what is taught, and demonstrated applications of it for
culture considered universally as salutary and fruitful.

In this, the education is in keeping with the human
nature of both teachers and students. Such education is liberating
because it reveals to the student what it means to be human, to
interiorize objective reality for the good of others, building on that
reality and developing its potential for a society that recognizes
genuinely human needs and aspirations.

OBE, on the other hand, pre-establishes outcomes based
on the subjective concerns or personal predictions of the future by
thinkers and their allies in education who for the most part are seeking
radical change. And all too often those "outcomes" are
untried, unproved, doubtful in their human significance. They make up
what psychologist W. J. Coulson calls "The Foolishness of
Futurism." Dr. Coulson quotes William Spady, godfather of OBE, in
an interview with Ron Brandt, Executive editor of the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development (an arm of the National Education
Association):

We are starting with what the research suggests about
the future and we design down, or design back, from there. We're talking
about a systematic process called Strategic Design; determining as well
as we can from studying the literature and available data about future
trends and conditions that our kids will be facing out there in the
world. Once we get a reasonable handle on those conditions we derive
from them a set of complex role performance outcomes that represent
effective adult functioning; to succeed as adults people will have to be
able to do this or that under these and those kinds of conditions."

Dr. Coulson comments in a footnote to that bit of
Spadyism:

"How can we get a reasonable handle on what doesn't
exist? Our assessment of 'handles' will be as inventive as our
assessment of future conditions. Why should we trust the futurists? See,
for example Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky's The Experts
(N.Y.: Pantheon, 1984) which lists hundreds of failed predictions about
the future."[31]

It is clear why future-minded OBE must wipe out courses
about the pasthistory, literature,
etc. Such studies will often contradict the values and the outcomes
predicted by the futurists, and in fact reveal the failure of such
"inventiveness" in the past. The future is a gamble;
predictions may be bets on "wisdom" and "goodness"
that in the past have been unmasked as sham. The best of the past is
perennial, applying to mankind in all ages; it is impossible to know in
advance what will be valuable continuations of such perennial values,
and what will be faux gems or echoes of ancient failures. No
wonder OBE disdains past wisdoms and ancient learnings. As Dr. Coulson
puts it: ". . . OBE aims to defeat academics; schools that adopt it
will see excellence disappear, for OBE is fundamentally
anti-intellectual."

In being anti-intellectual OBE, betrays the very
functioning and faculties which distinguish humans from brutes. It is
training, as is done to animals, rather than education which is offered
to humans, even young ones. And as with animals who are trained, the
response is automatic, not free; the intellect is bypassed, so that the
will may be captured, to a great extent through the emotions and
conditioned responses. The ignorance of brute animals about what is
happening to them in regard to outcome training is purposely applied to
OBE.

"First, the OBE facilitator wants to begin with a
clean slate, so to speak. That is, (the facilitators) want a mind free
from prior knowledge or beliefs.

"Then knowledge and the key to acquiring it (e.g.,
proper reading instruction) will be withheld.

"After this, they begin the 'process' with Mastery
Learning, i.e., stimulus/response, dialectic thinking and
assessment-remediation (s/r) and reassessment. (Stimulus/response is the
same process that is used to train animals.)

"The children must have their minds cleansed of
prior beliefs, attitudes and values. (Of course, if children begin going
to school at three months of age, think of the time they'll save later).
Altering the child's state of consciousness is one process to accomplish
this. . .the programmers call it Meditation, Visualization, or Attention
Control.... All this is done under the pretense of teaching the child to
relax, or maybe to visualize.... Then the subconscious is fed the
relevant information...."[32]

Poisoning The Future

The philosophic genealogy of OBE is as perverse as that
of Naziism or Communism. Dr. Coulson identifies the poisoned well of
U.S. education to be the mind of the late John Dewey:

"Almost all the growth-oriented educational
experiments of this American century have derived from the writings of
philosopher John Dewey. Rogers' were no exception; he had come under
Dewey's influence as a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia
University, in the 1920's."[33]

Echoing Dewey, Rogers said of a student unfortunate
enough to run afoul of OBE:

"His learning will not be confined to the ancient
intellectual concepts and specializations. It will not be a preparation
for living. It will be, in itself, an experience in living.
Feelings of inadequacy, hatred, a desire for power, feelings of love and
awe and respect, feelings of fear and dread, unhappiness with parents or
with other childrenall these
will be an open part of his curriculum, as worthy of exploration as
history or mathematics. . "[34]

If this makes the students of our age appear as
psychological subjects more than thinking and maturing normal human
beings, it is no accident. For the evil genius of OBE is, quite clearly,
what Dr. Coulson calls "trash psychology":

"'Self-directing growth from within' was . . . the
theme of Carl Rogers' earlier, well-known approach to clinical
psychology, called client-centered therapy (and earlier yet,
nondirective counseling.) But in practice . . . Rogers resisted a long
time before yielding to the idea that nondirectiveness in adults
suffices to promote learning in children."

Of course, it really doesn't; it promotes subordination
of students to the whims, fantasies, "do what I will" excesses
of the most daringly and frankly corrupt:

"Well-brought-up children ought to avoid sharing
intimacies with poorly brought-up children. Instead, in classroom
discussion sessions that I have referred to elsewhere as faux
psychotherapy (and that remains a key element in OBE) all children alike
are obliged to 'share' and to 'listen'."[35]-[36]

Richard Chadbourne has called Dewey and lapsed priest
Ernest Renan, Dewey's senior by a generation and much admired by the
American educationist, "Two Organizers of Divinity."[37]
Chadbourne wrote:

It is no wonder that one step beyond we find this quite
possibly accurate prediction by feminist leader Gloria Steinem:

"By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our
children to believe in human potential, not God."[38]

All who agree with her can count on OBE to pave the way.

Frank Morriss
Wheat Ridge, CO

(It is quite clear the highjackers of the school bus
do not intend to return the children for ransom. Their purpose is the
power to change the children into their own image, in blasphemous
imitation of God's creation. They don't intend to return the children at
all.) FM